


march 10

by childhoodinfamy



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 05:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3517769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/childhoodinfamy/pseuds/childhoodinfamy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn’t wonder if Sarah Rogers knew before either of them, because he knows she did; or: Steve's gifts through the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	march 10

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday, bucky barnes, ya old geezer.
> 
> (on [tumblr](http://stebers.tumblr.com/post/113281749474/march-10)!)

_march 10, 1929_

When Bucky turns twelve, Steve gets him his own chair at the Rogers’ round dining room table.

Before, when Bucky had stayed for meals, they’d had to bring Steve’s desk chair out for Bucky to sit in, but this time, when Mrs. Rogers lets him in the front door, he sees there’s already one there. It’s an old thing, scratched and faded, most likely picked up from a second hand store; there’s a piece of folded newspaper tucked under one of its legs to stop it from rocking.

(Years later, Bucky will think back on that newspaper. He’ll think of Steve testing the chair over and over, before Bucky gets there, to make sure its balance is perfect. He thinks of Sarah Rogers watching from the sink. He imagines she’s doing dishes, smiling at her son, and he doesn’t wonder if Sarah Rogers knew before either of them, because he knows she did.)

Steve comes out of his room, then, and puts his hands in his pockets. He shrugs when he says, “It was mom’s idea.” He gestures to the chair. “Y’know, because you’re here so much.”

“Don’t give me credit,” Mrs. Rogers says as she passes. “You’re the one who brought it up.”

And something about that makes Bucky smile. That Steve went to all that trouble.

-

_march 10, 1931_

For Bucky’s fourteenth birthday, Steve gets him a black eye.

He’s pulling Steve out of the third fight in as many weeks when Bucky gets an accidental elbow to the eye, and he knows immediately that he’s not going to be able to hide it from his ma. It’s birthday dinner night, too, and she’d already been on edge when Bucky had left to pick Steve up.

By the time they’re alone in the parking lot, Steve is already muttering his apologies. “You didn’t have to,” he says, his words thick with the blood that trickles from his nose.

“’Course I did. Shoulda known better than to leave you alone for an hour.” Bucky laughs and offers Steve a hand up. “C’mon, we’re late for family dinner. Hope you didn’t think a broken nose would get you outta that.”

Steve shrugs one shoulder. “Figured it wouldn’t. Your parents hate me enough as is, though.”

“Just ma,” Bucky teases. “She’ll hate you more if you skip dinner. She made a tray special for you, no cheese.”

“She didn’t have to do that,” Steve mutters.

“Well, you would have just been eating broccoli otherwise, pal. Besides,” Bucky gestures to his own eye, “she’s gonna find out there was a fight either way.”

(When he gets shot in the shoulder on a battlefield over a decade later, as he bleeds into the ground, Bucky will remember this black eye, and he’ll think that it wasn’t the first or the last time he’d get hurt for Steve, and this probably isn’t either. He hopes not, at least. He’d like to live to keep getting hurt for Steve Rogers.)

Steve grimaces. “Sorry about that.”

“You know how you can make it up to me?” Bucky asks as he starts directing them towards the Barnes house.

“Distract Aunt Helen?”

“Distract Aunt Helen! I’m begging you. I swear, Stevie. If she asks me about school one more time, I’m gonna die, I swear. I already had to sit through breakfast with her this morning. I can’t take another hour of it.”

Steve sighs. “Fine. Think your ma will have any ice I can use?”

-

_march 10, 1932_

On his fifteenth birthday, Steve hands him a carefully wrapped package.

“Sorry it’s not much,” Steve says before Bucky’s even has a chance to figure out what it is. “I just thought—“

“Hey, would you let me open it before you start gettin’ all chatty?”

It’s wrapped in newspaper, with a small card attached— _Happy birthday, Bucky. From, Steve._ Inside is a plain notebook, just bigger than the size of Bucky’s palm.

After he’s lifted it from its wrapping, Bucky flips through the pages, expecting them to be full of sketches. Steve's given him drawings plenty of times before, and that seems like the kind of thing Steve might do. Spend months and months on something and then downplay it as nothing.

But the pages are empty, lined and crisp and clean.

Bucky’s more than a little confused, and he’s about to ask when Steve jumps in.

“I just thought you liked telling stories so much, maybe you’d want to write ‘em down sometime.” He has his hands in his pockets, shoulders shrugged up by his ears.

“You gonna read ‘em if I do?” Bucky asks.

“Sure,” Steve says.

Bucky laughs. “Then I will.” He smiles at Steve, maybe a little too long.

(When he goes off to training, he tucks that notebook into his bag. There won’t be a lot of time for writing, he knows, but it’s full of letters to Steve, and he doesn’t want Steve reading them. Not yet. They’re not really stories, anyways. They’re a little too honest for that.)

“You never stop talkin’, anyway, so maybe this’ll get you to be quiet for a while,” Steve teases.

Bucky shoves his arm. “Shut up, punk.”

-

_march 10, 1935_

Steve picks Bucky up from mass early on his eighteenth birthday, and that’s gift enough in and of itself.

He’s spared the endless small talk afterwards that his ma usually makes him sit through, ducking out after he whispers, “Hey, I promised Steve, sorry, Ma.”

Bucky bursts out the front doors and hurries down the steps towards where Steve is waiting for him, kicking at pebbles on the sidewalk.

“Hey!” Bucky says.

Steve turns, smiling. Bucky loosens his tie and grins. “So what’s the big plan?” he asks. “I hope it’s not too big. I think my ass is numb from the pew again.”

“The plan was to get you out of mass early,” Steve says with a shrug. “My mom does have a pie waiting, though.”

“Oh, thank God for the Rogers family!” Bucky yells, throwing one arm around Steve and the other into the air. “Pecan?” he asks, hopefully.

“Pecan,” Steve confirms.

“ _Damn_ , it’s a good day to be me.” He smiles at Steve, then, pulling him in closer.

(He’ll think about that, when he’s lying a little too close to Steve in a tent that’s been pitched in the mud. He’ll think about how he wishes he’d kissed Steve, then, outside his ma’s church. He wishes he’d just done it, because then he wouldn’t be wondering the same damn things, almost ten years later.)

-

_march 10, 1938_

Steve gives Bucky a heart attack for his twenty-first birthday.

They’d made plans, months ago, to go out dancing that night. Bucky had been bragging since December about how he’d be the best dancer there, and how he’d finally be able to buy a dame a drink. Steve had valiantly humored him, nodding his head and rolling his eyes and _sure, Bucky_ -ing in all the right places. Bucky’d sworn he’d find Steve a date for that night.

And he had. He had found Steve a date—a real nice one, but not _too_ nice, just nice enough that Steve would have a decent time but never ask her out again, just nice enough that Bucky knew Steve wouldn’t hate her but not nice enough that Bucky wouldn’t have to feel bad hoping that Steve didn’t like her too much.

He’d found Steve a date, but they aren’t out dancing.

Instead, Bucky is lain out next to Steve in his bed, listening for his rattling breaths, holding his hand a little too hard. Bucky is looking at Mrs. Rogers desperately every time she comes in to check on Steve, far too tired to be schooling his expression anymore.

“Dammit, Steve,” he whispers for the thousandth time. “Come on.”

It had started weeks ago, the barking cough that tore through Steve’s body, but he’d been recovering steadily. It had been almost gone just yesterday, and Steve had insisted that they keep their original plans for the night. Bucky had given in after Steve had stubbornly held his ground.

Bucky had gotten all dressed up, too, but as soon as Mrs. Rogers opened the door, he knew it wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t even need to hear the cough coming from Steve’s room—Mrs. Rogers’s eyes said it all.

He was toeing off his shoes at the door and walking quickly to Steve’s room before he could even think to call their dates.

For hours, Steve barely drifts into consciousness for longer than a handful of seconds at a time, and when he finally does, his hand tightens around Bucky’s.

“Hey,” Bucky says, his voice croaky.

“I’m so sorry,” Steve says. “We were supposed to go dancing.

“Be quiet,” Bucky says. “I don’t care about the stupid dance hall, Steve.”

“We’ll go another time,” Steve says. Bucky knows how bad he must feel, if he’s volunteering to go dancing.

(They do, a few weeks later, and Bucky thinks maybe it was better holding Steve’s hand.)

“You gotta not die first, pal,” he says, though he’d never joke about it if he didn’t know Steve was going to be okay.

Steve laughs, and it turns into a cough. When he’s done, he says, “Happy birthday, Bucky.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bucky says. “Now go back to sleep.”

-

_march 10, 1941_

On his twenty-fourth birthday, Steve gives Bucky a _maybe_.

He gives him an _if we can find the money._

He gives him a _we’re going to make terrible roommates._

He gives him a _we’d have to have two rooms. I’m not sharing a bed with you. You snore._

(On Steve’s birthday, that year, in their one-room apartment with its tiny kitchen and closet-sized bathroom and one bed and not much of anything else, Bucky is curled around Steve’s back and snoring into his ear. He wakes up smiling.)

-

_march 10, 1944_

Steve gives Bucky a night off from watch when he turns twenty-seven.

He also tells the other Commandos that it’s Bucky’s birthday, so they share a drink or four around the fire and let Bucky tell his stories.

Steve’s heard all the stories before, but Bucky can tell he’s still paying attention. He sketches the whole time, but he laughs in the right places. Bucky watches him from the corner of his eye, not as affected by the drink as he would have been, a year ago.

Later, when everyone is exhausted, Bucky stays up with Steve for first watch.

“It’s your night off,” Steve says.

“Yeah, but it’s not yours.” Like this explains everything. Maybe it does.

Bucky shakes Morita awake two hours later, then walks to his and Steve’s tent. He crawls into Steve’s sleeping bag with him, like they do when it’s cold. Like Bucky wants to do every night.

(Eventually, they do. It’s easier to sleep through the night that way. Bucky tells himself that’s the only reason Steve’s willing to do it, because he refuses to let himself believe any different.)

“Happy birthday,” Steve mumbles, halfway to sleep, against Bucky’s chest. Bucky doesn’t let himself shiver.

-

_march 10, 1945_

For his twenty-eighth birthday, they tell him Steve is dead.

-

_march 10, 2015_

On Bucky’s twenty-ninth (ninety-eighth) birthday, Steve kisses Bucky for the first time (for the millionth time).

He is alive, and Steve is alive, and it’s the best present he’s ever been given.


End file.
